Ed Helms

The detainment in poor conditions we're seeing.

Alligator Alcatraz getting a lot of terrible press.

They're so heinous.

But I have to say, I think what's most striking about the Palma Rays isn't how much they resemble today.

It's how much they don't.

Because in 1919, America's paranoia was at least tethered to an idea, right?

The specter of communism, Bolshevism, and this global ideology that was challenging capitalism.

But today, there is no grand ideological struggle.

We're just living through...

something pettier and, I don't know, smaller.

And it just, it's the weaponization of one man's ego, right?

Trump's not offering like an alternative worldview here.

He's just offering pure, unfiltered grievance as a political identity.

Yeah, 100 percent.

There is a bit of a silver lining that emerged that from all of this.

50 years later.

It wins in the end.

That is accurate.

In the wake of the Palma raids, we saw the emergence of the American Civil Liberties Union, which formed in 1920.

The ACLU began as a scrappy band of lawyers and journalists determined to defend free speech due process.